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Undisclosed FBI documents suggest that the Kent State antiwar protests were more meticulously planned than originally thought and that one or more gunshots may have been fired at embattled Ohio National Guardsmen before their killings of four students and woundings of at least nine others on that searing day in May 1970.?

As the nation marks the 40th anniversary of the Kent State antiwar protests Tuesday, a review of hundreds of previously unpublished investigative reports sheds a new — and very different — light on the tragic episode.

The upheaval that enveloped the northeastern Ohio campus actually began three days earlier, in downtown Kent. Stirred to action by President Nixon's expansion of U.S. military operations in Cambodia, a roving mob of earnest antiwar activists, hard-core radicals, curious students and others smashed 50 bank and store windows, looted a jewelry store and hurled bricks and bottles at police.

Four officers suffered injuries, and the mayor declared a civil emergency. Only tear gas dispersed the mob.

An exhaustive review later concluded that this unrest on the streets — the worst in Kent's history — was "not an organized riot or a planned protest."

But the FBI's investigation swiftly uncovered reliable evidence that suggested otherwise. Among the strongest was a pre-dawn conversation — never before reported — between two unnamed men overheard inside a campus lounge later that night. Their discussion was witnessed by the girlfriend of a Kent State student and conveyed up the FBI chain of command 15 days later.

"We did it," one man exulted, according to the inquiry. "We got the riot started."

The second man expressed disappointment at being excluded from the riot's planning. "Wait until tomorrow night," the leader replied excitedly. "We just got the word. We're going to burn the ROTC building."

This was 20 hours before the ROTC headquarters on the Kent State campus, an old wooden frame building, was, in fact, burned to the ground.

"What about the flare?" the second man asked before the leader spotted the coed listening to them and abruptly ended the conversation. Dozens of witnesses later told the FBI they saw a flare used to ignite the blaze.

ow largely forgotten, the torching of the ROTC building was the true precursor to the killings at Kent State because it triggered the deployment of the National Guard to the fevered campus.

That deployment climaxed in bloodshed on the afternoon of May 4, 1970, with the guardsmen, clad in gas masks and confronted by angry, rock-throwing students, firing their M-1 rifles 67 times in 13 seconds, killing Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Knox Schroeder.

A report submitted to Attorney General John Mitchell in June 1970 stated "there was no sniper" who could have fired at the guardsmen before the killings.

Numerous witnesses corroborated this.

A female freshman provided the FBI with a sworn statement that "there was no shot before [the guardsmen's] volley, and there were no warning shots fired." The Justice Department's internal review cited statements by six guardsmen who "pointedly" told the FBI that their lives were not in danger and that "it was not a shooting situation."

Yet the declassified FBI files show the FBI already had developed credible evidence suggesting that there was indeed a sniper and that one or more shots may have been fired at the guardsmen first.

Rumors of a sniper had circulated for at least a day before the fatal confrontation, the documents show. And a memorandum sent to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover on May 19, 1970, referred to bullet holes found in a tree and a statue — evidence, the report stated, that "indicated that at least two shots had been fired at the National Guard."

Another interviewee told agents that a guardsman had spoken of "a confirmed report of a sniper."

It also turned out that the FBI had its own informant and agent-provocateur roaming the crowd, a part-time Kent State student named Terry Norman, who had a camera. Mr. Norman also was armed with a snub-nosed revolver that FBI ballistics tests, first declassified in 1977, concluded had indeed been discharged on that day.

Then there was the testimony of an ROTC cadet whose identity remains unknown, one of the pervasive redactions concealing the names of all the FBI agents who conducted the interviews and of all those whom they interrogated. Although presumably angry over the demonstrators' destruction of the campus ROTC building, the cadet's calm, precise firsthand account nonetheless carries a credibility not easily dismissed.
e the fatal volley, the ROTC cadet told the FBI, he "heard one round, a pause, two rounds, and then the M-1s opened up."

The report continued that the cadet "stated that the first three rounds were definitely not M-1s. He said they could possibly have been a .45 caliber. … [He] further stated that he heard confirmed reports of sniper fire coming in over both the National Guard radio and the state police radio."

The cadet also told the FBI he observed demonstrators carrying baseball bats, golf clubs and improvised weapons, including pieces of steel wire cut into footlong sections, along with radios and other electronic devices "used to monitor the police and Guard wavelengths."

Separately, a female student told the FBI she "recalled hearing what she thought was [the sound of] firecrackers and then a few seconds later [she] heard noise that to her sounded like a machine gun going off, but then later thought it may have been a volley of shots from the Guard."

Absent the declassification of the FBI's entire investigative file, many questions remain unanswered — including why the documents quoted here were overlooked, or discounted, in the Justice Department's official findings.

At a minimum, the FBI documents strongly challenge the received narrative that the rioting in downtown Kent was spontaneous and unplanned, that the burning of the ROTC headquarters was similarly impulsive and that the guardsmen's fatal shootings were explicable only as unprovoked acts.

The FBI files provide, in short, a hidden history of the killings at Kent State. They show that the "four dead in Ohio" more properly belong, in the grand sweep of history, to four days in May, an angry, chaotic and violent interlude when a controversial foreign war came home to American soil.

• James Rosen, a Fox News correspondent, examined previously undisclosed FBI files on the Kent State shootings while researching his biography "The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate."

I have always thought the demonstrators at Kent State were vile pieces of shit, and my assumption has always been that the riots/demonstration were organized and planned.

This is interesting:

A 2010 audio analysis of a tape recording of the incident by Stuart Allen and Tom Owen who were described by the Cleveland Plain Dealer as "nationally respected forensic audio experts" concluded that the guard were given an order to fire. The original 30-minute reel-to-reel tape was made by Terry Strubbe, a Kent State communications student who turned on his recorder and put its microphone in his dorm window overlooking the campus. It is the only known recording to capture the events leading up to the shootings. A copy was found in 2007 by Alan Canfora, one of the wounded, who located a copy of the tape in a library archive. According to the enhanced recording a male voice yells "Guard!". Several seconds pass. Then, "All right, prepare to fire!". "Get down!" someone shouts urgently, presumably in the crowd. Finally, "Guard! . . . " followed two seconds later by a long, booming volley of gunshots. The entire spoken sequence lasts 17 seconds. Strubbe himself disagrees with the experts findings saying "It was a really bad recording, It’s pure mud."[22] Ronald Snyder who commanded a National Guard unit at Kent State not involved in shootings said "You would never see anything in training that would say 'Guard, do this.' It would be like saying, 'Army, do this.' It doesn't make sense." [23] Further analysis of the audiotape revealed that four pistol shots and a violent confrontation occurred approximately 70 seconds before the National Guard opened fire. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer this new analysis raised questions about the role of Terry Norman, a Kent State student who was an FBI informant and known to be carrying a pistol during the disturbance. Alan Canfora said it was premature to reach any conclusions. [24]

I don't buy the part about the supposed order to fire but the part about the pistol shots is interesting.

"Guard" is a command in civil disturbance training with a rifle using a bayonet. It refers to placing your weapon in a defensive posture, with the bayonet forward. It is not an aiming stance. From FM 23-25:

6. GUARD a. TO ASSUME POSITION OF GUARD

(1) Face the opponent.

(2) Leading with the left foot, take a short step and space the feet laterally as well as in depth, toes pointing toward the opponent. Bending the knees slightly, incline the body slightly forward, hips level (fig. 1) .

(3) At the same time throw the rifle forward, point of the bayonet moving straight toward the opponent, and catch the rifle with both hands. This movement must be swift and sure.

(4) Grasp the rifle with the left hand, palm against the left side of the rifle at the most convenient point forward of the balance, usually just in front of the lower band, with the left arm slightly bent. With the right hand, palm to the left, grasp the small of the stock. To prevent bruising the right forefinger, hold the small of the stock so that the finger is not touching the trigger guard. Hold the under and inside portion of the forearm against the comb of the stock, with the base of the butt snugly against the side of the hip. Hold the rifle firmly but not rigidly with both hands, without canting it. Point the bayonet at the base of the opponent's throat.

(5) Balance the weight of the body on both legs, ready for instant movement in any direction.

(6) Keep the eyes on the opponent's bayonet and body.

In other words, it wasn't a preparatory command to fire, but a command to take a defensive stance.

Not all of the dead were protestors. At least one was just a student walking across campus.

I never blamed the NG for this. Whomever was Governor of Ohio at the time should not have sent the National Guard to deal with a campus riot. The situation should have been handled by the Ohio State Police and local authorities, preferably with tear gas first.

"Guard" is a command in civil disturbance training with a rifle using a bayonet. It refers to placing your weapon in a defensive posture, with the bayonet forward. It is not an aiming stance. From FM 23-25:

In other words, it wasn't a preparatory command to fire, but a command to take a defensive stance.

Interesting. Didn't know that.

What I found interesting in that article was the mention of the pistol shots. I have no idea where they were or how it happened but if they were fired before the volley of shots then there could have been significant fear on the part of the NG of getting shot.

It must have been a chaotic scene. Protesters all over the place. The guardsmen were, or appeared to be, wearing gas masks in the photos I've seen so their vision may have been resricted by them.

I'd hate to have been in their position.

And once rounds are fired, whatever the reason, that bullet will go until the energy is expended or it hits some one or some thing.

Not all of the dead were protestors. At least one was just a student walking across campus.

I never blamed the NG for this. Whomever was Governor of Ohio at the time should not have sent the National Guard to deal with a campus riot. The situation should have been handled by the Ohio State Police and local authorities, preferably with tear gas first.

Everything that you are saying was done. Remember, this went on for several days, starting with a protest that ended with the torching of the ROTC building on campus, but even before that, there were rumors that radicals had infiltrated the campus and were planning on creating a riot, which led to . Kent Mayor Satrom calling a meeting with Kent city officials and an Ohio Army National Guard rep. It was the mayor who made the decision to call Governor Rhodes and request the National Guard because Satrom believed that local officials would not be able to handle the scale of the planned attacks. This was on 2 May. The Mobilization Order went out at 1700 hrs and the Guard arrived at 2200 hrs.

By the time the National Guard arrived, a demonstration was already under way on the campus, and the campus ROTC building was burning. More than a thousand protesters surrounded the building and cheered and pelted the Kent firemen and police officers with rocks and other objects when they tried to put out the fire. Protesters even carried the fire hose into the Commons and slashed it. The National Guard detained numerous rioters and employed tear gas in an attempt to disperse the crowd and at least one rioter sustained a bayonet injury, which is consistent with the command to "guard" that was heard on the audio tape.

On 3 May, the governor announced a curfew and said that he would obtain a court order to disperse. There was another riot that evening, which the National Guard dispersed, but a sit-in followed.

On 4 May, despite University officials handing out 12,000 leaflets stating that the 1200 protest was canceled 2,000 people gathered on the university's Commons. On orders from the civil authority, the Ohio Army National Guard (ARNG) attempted to disperse the students. A campus patrolman read the order to disperse or face arrest and the protesters responded by throwing rocks. The campus cops retreated and just before noon, the Guard ordered the crowd to disperse, and most refused, at which point the Guard used tear gas, which was rendered ineffective by the wind. the crowd began chanting "Pigs off campus!" and throwing rocks and some of them lobbed the tear gas canisters back at the National Guardsmen. Then, 77 National Guard troops advanced with fixed bayonets (against 2,000 protesters). The rioters fell back, but didn't disperse. Eventually, the 77 Guardsmen were isolated from the main body and surrounded by the rioters. That's when the shooting started.

In other words, everything that could have been done up to the shooting had been tried, but the radicals wanted a confrontation, just as they had in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention in 1968.

The ironic thing is that the protesters were protesting a war started by Democrats. And yet, Neil Young blames Nixon. IIRC, and you can help me here Major, that the President doesn't call for the National Guard, the state does, correct?

Not all of the dead were protestors. At least one was just a student walking across campus.

I never blamed the NG for this. Whomever was Governor of Ohio at the time should not have sent the National Guard to deal with a campus riot. The situation should have been handled by the Ohio State Police and local authorities, preferably with tear gas first.

Pull that shit where I live and there will be hundreds dead. The black Mayor of Baton Rouge told the Katrina beauties from New Orleans that they were not going to take over this city. That's how Kent should have been handled. Shoot the fucking rioters and if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, that's what I call tough titty. The rioting would have lasted less than 1 hour here rather than days at Kent State.

Pull that shit where I live and there will be hundreds dead. The black Mayor of Baton Rouge told the Katrina beauties from New Orleans that they were not going to take over this city. That's how Kent should have been handled. Shoot the fucking rioters and if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, that's what I call tough titty. The rioting would have lasted less than 1 hour here rather than days at Kent State.